


Stay With Me (original version)

by Demiguise303



Series: Stay With Me (both versions available) [1]
Category: The Good Place (TV)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Emotional Infidelity, F/M, Love, Requited Love, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-18
Updated: 2019-01-18
Packaged: 2019-10-06 17:15:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,740
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17349308
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Demiguise303/pseuds/Demiguise303
Summary: Being with Eleanor is like standing on the very edge of a cliff. He’s fighting not to fall forwards, into the ocean-blue of her eyes, but he can’t bear to fall back onto solid, safe earth either. He has to be content with this fragile, precarious thing that isn’t quite love but at the same time isn’t not, that he knows won’t last. Eventually he’s going to fall, forwards or backwards, and neither is better because he’s going to lose her either way.He shouldn’t be thinking about her.(He never stops)





	Stay With Me (original version)

 

 

 

 _If there’s a hell,_ Chidi thinks _, this is it._

.

 

It starts that first day, in his office.

It ends there, too. A little later. And then starts again, so much harder and more painful than before because he’d thought it was finally over and because Eleanor.

There’s more to it than that, though.

.

 

It starts with an essay. The author spells Kant wrong, and seems to think that “some old guy in the IGA express checkout line” is a valid source, and Chidi’s seriously considering just failing them on principle (who spells _Kant_ wrong?) when there’s a knock at the door.

It starts with her getting his name wrong. It starts with the look in her eyes – fear and hope and something else, something big and desperate, and for a second he is filled with an absolute certainty that he’s seen that look before, that he –

_They’re in the kitchen. Chidi feels like an anvil just fell on his head, or maybe an air conditioning unit. Eleanor turns her face away from the screen as if it’s hurting her to watch._

_Eleanor-on-the-tape was smiling. Content._ I did that _, he thinks, and feels a hot, confusing thing writhe behind his ribcage._ I made her look like that _._

_“So, yeah, I guess… do you have any feelings like that for me… again?”_

And then he blinks, and she is a stranger again.

It starts with the odd feeling that this is the most important moment in his life.

.

 

She bullies him into asking Simone out. She’s smart, he’ll give her that. She knows just how to trap him.

(It’s almost as though they’ve known each other for years.)

The dinner is a disaster: stilted conversation about the weather, some brain science thing that Chidi does not understand, and Rawls. The waiter arrives, and it takes half an hour of agonizing over what to order for Simone to snatch the menu out of his hands. That’s how he ends up with pan-fried sardine salad, olives and fetta cheese. Chidi hates olives, but he eats them anyway because he doesn’t want to offend Simone.

The tablecloth is the same blue as Eleanor’s eyes.

.

 

There’s something off about Trevor.

Something cold and dangerous and wrong.

_“She hot for teach? Did you pork the dork?” And he’s being torn apart because Eleanor, his Eleanor, wants him to be with the new one. The good one._

_She doesn’t want him, but he doesn’t want anyone but her._

Eleanor moves, just a little. Placing her body between Trevor and Chidi and Tahani and Jason, and he sees a kind of fierce, familiar protectiveness cross her face.

(He can’t shake the feeling that they’ve known each other before.)

Trevor takes them to what must be the worst bar in the world (and that’s saying something, considering an old girlfriend once dragged Chidi to a nightclub where shirtless men fought in cages. Needless to say, that relationship didn’t last long) and hugs Eleanor, and Chidi feels a kind of quiet fury creeping up on him. She looks like she’s in pain.

She tries to talk him out of his ethical meltdown and he sees his own fear and pain reflected in her eyes, and that scares him even more because he’s known her for six weeks and already she’s the bravest person he knows.

(It’s longer than that.)

So he hurts her, and then he leaves.

He hurts her, and he leaves, and so does she.

He hurts her, and still she comes back.

_Okay. Here we go._

.

 

Months pass. Trevor disappears, and leaves a note that only seems mildly suspicious. The same day, he sees the librarian and a dark-haired woman who looks vaguely familiar popping open a bottle of champagne. Eleanor wins $18, 000. Tahani starts dating the black sheep of the Hemsworth family. Jason joins a yoga group for exactly forty-three seconds. Life is good.

(It’s not, though.)

(If there’s a hell, this is it.)

Being with Eleanor is like standing on the very edge of a cliff. He’s fighting not to fall forwards, into the ocean-blue of her eyes, but he can’t bear to fall back onto solid, safe earth either. He has to be content with this fragile, precarious thing that isn’t quite love but at the same time isn’t _not_ , that he knows won’t last. Eventually he’s going to fall, forwards or backwards, and neither is better because he’s going to lose her either way.

He shouldn’t be thinking about her.

(He never stops)

He’s with Simone. He loves Simone. Probably.

_“It’s not that I couldn’t love you,” he says, and her face falls. There’s a sharp ache in his chest. “I mean… you’re amazing… and fearless,” and they’re going to the Bad Place and there’s no way to save her and he feels like he’s drowning “and clearly… symmetrical…”_

_(What?)_

_(Wow.)_

_(Symmetrical?)_

_(Really?)_

_(Is that the best you can do?)_

_(_ Really _?!)_

“I love you,” Simone says after nine months. And his response – oh, his response! It would have made Shakespeare weep with envy.

“But… why?”

The next day he tells Eleanor, and she punches him in the arm and yells at him for fifteen minutes straight. She _wants_ him to love Simone. She doesn’t dream of the two of them, curled together amidst a sea of blankets, walking around a lake, anything and everything from any romance he’s ever heard of.

It hurts more than anything Chidi’s ever felt in his entire life.

.

 

He’s had it. He’s done. He can’t stand it; this agonising fight against gravity that’s taking all his strength. He has to fall backwards. He has to.

But he can’t, not when every stolen moment with Eleanor – every moment with her eyes and her face and her voice – knit together to form a patchwork blanket of heartbreaking pain and joy and rightness that is unlike anything he’s ever experienced before.

He can’t, because she hugs him, and she fits in his arms so perfectly that it almost feels like she was created by the universe for him, or he for her, or both.

(He doesn’t believe in soulmates.)

.

 

_(“Eleanor? Hi. I’m Chidi Anagonye, and you are my soulmate.”)_

_(“I love you. I love you. I love you, too.”)_

_(“Promise me you won’t let go of my hand.”)_

_(“We will find each other, and we will help each other, because we’re soulmates_.”)

He can’t leave her, so he forces her to leave him.

“God, Eleanor, didn’t your parents ever teach you to behave like a person?!”

The second he says it he regrets it. Her façade cracks, just for a split second, and he’s hurt her and he feels sick. There’s a terrible bruised look in her eyes.

Then the walls come back. The doors slam shut and lock, and Eleanor draws herself up to her full height (not particularly impressive, actually). “The only thing my parents taught me was that abortion pills don’t always work,” she says coldly, and whisks out of the room, slamming his office door shut behind her.

She’s gone. It’s what he wanted.

He’s incapable of just being happy.

 

.

 

It’s the longest they’ve ever gone without speaking. That is, just over eleven hours. Eleven hours, six minutes and fifty-eight seconds, not that he’s counting.

He can’t sleep. Simone stopped by, but she knows him and she knows when he needs space, so she left again. He’s being eaten alive by the guilt.

Today, 1.15 am.

Eleanor? I’m sorry.

Today, 1.15 am.

I should never have said that.

Today, 2.03 am

You’re probably asleep. I shouldn’t be bothering you.

Today, 2.38 am

Please talk to me. I’ll do anything.

Today, 2.56 am

Please. It was all my fault. I’m sorry.

.

 

The man behind the coffee shop counter smiles at him. “All alone today?”

He knows Eleanor. Everyone on the street knows Eleanor, because she got into a fight with a biker three times her size after he yelled… well, a significant number of racial slurs at Tahani and Chidi and Jason.

(Later, the doctor bandages her wrist and diagnoses her with a concussion, and comments on her injuries. “You should see the other guy,” cracks Eleanor.

“That’s not a joke,” says Jason. “The other guy was hurt real bad.”

“He had a greater surface area,” Chidi says. His tone is light, but he’s shaking. She could have been seriously injured. Or worse. She is the dumbest, bravest, most reckless person he’s ever met.

“Nerd!”)

Chidi can’t manage a smile back. “Yep.”

The guy winces. “You two break up?”

“We’re not – she doesn’t– I have a girlfriend!”

The coffee guy looks surprised. Chidi turns his attention to the coffee menu. They’ve added three now flavours.

Oh no.

.

 

He goes to her motel that evening, and finds her throwing clothes into a bag. A sudden panic seizes him, because _of_ _course_ she’s leaving.

“I’m sorry. It was my fault . I deserve everything you’re thinking.”

The next hour is a blur of Eleanor screaming at him. He stands there, takes it on the chin, because he deserves it and it’s what she needs. Somewhere around the forty-minute mark, tears stark rolling down her cheeks. Eventually, she runs out of words and sinks to the floor, sobbing brokenly.

He wraps his arms around her, and she curls into his chest.

.

 

He’s fallen.

He realises it the second he wakes up, on her floor, with sunlight skipping across her cheeks, turning her hair to molten gold. Their arms are around each other. She’s never looked more symmetrical.

He’s fallen off the cliff and into the ocean and the guilt is stronger than it’s ever been before.

.

 

It ends, and begins again, after the liquidation of the Brainy Bunch, after Michael and Janet and Who What When Where Wine and chilli and the meeting with the dean that crushed his dreams and brought his career to a sudden, shuddering halt.

He looks at Eleanor, slung across her chair without a care in the world. He wishes he could be more like her.

“I need to end things with Simone.”

.

 

“…but too bad, because I need to say it, because you deserve it. Because… because…” because I love you. Because I’m scared for you. Because out of everyone I’ve ever met, you’re the only person who I’m sure about.

He doesn’t say that, though.

He kisses her, and she kisses him back, and everything is fine. Everything is great. 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Um. Yeah. This is it, I guess... I don’t have a beta, and I was really tired.
> 
> I wrote 2 versions of this and couldn’t decide between them, so I’m going to post both! The second one is going to come soonish, and will be a little lighter. Mmmmaybe.
> 
> Constructive criticism is always welcome but PLEASE BE KIND as SWM is the first piece of writing I’ve ever posted on any platform that I haven’t immediately deleted because I’m the world’s biggest coward.
> 
> Title: from Stay by Blackpink. Which I’m listening to right now. I suck at titles :/
> 
> Thank you for reading, and I love you.


End file.
